Category: IFP

IFP (Planning for conference reflection)

by Parvathy

In the past few weeks of IFP, we started planning out the final IFP conference, and in order to help us with our planning, we had multiple workshops about how we can be better conference leaders.

I think that all of these workshops are useful for us because we learnt about how to keep our audience engaged. Our final IFP conference is going to be with grade 10 FIBs personally I think it will be easier to keep them engaged compared to the 5th graders we held a practice conference with earlier this year. However, I also feel that these 10th graders might get bored easily if they don’t find our conference interesting, therefore I think that we will need to try our best to make our conference engaging.

From Mr Alchin’s talk, we learnt about the importance of paraphrasing especially when it comes to ensuring that the audience really understands what we want to say and it also helps to keep them engaged. Of course, paraphrasing only appears natural with practice therefore in the upcoming sessions we have, I want to try to practice my paraphrasing skills with my group members so that we can incorporate paraphrasing in our final conference.

From Mr Q’s talk, we learn about the importance of structuring our session properly so that the audience remains engaged and understands the information we provide. So for our final conference, I think it is best if we have essential sections such as an icebreaker and a recap at the end, but it is also important to have some calming or ‘aesthetic’ music in the background as we learnt that learning works best as an aesthetic experience. It is also very important to make sure that we create a comfortable environment and be inclusive of everyone so that everyone feels like they can contribute to the discussions.

IFP Reflection – Microagressions

by Parvathy

During our last session of IFP, we discussed microaggressions, which are brief daily verbal or behavioural acts that can communicate hostile, derogatory or negative attitudes to minority groups (it can be intentional or unintentional). These microaggressions could range from assumptions such as “You’re Indian, so you must be good at math.” to detrimental assumptions such as “They’re wearing hijabs hence they are terrorists”. These assumptions and stereotypes really do impact these people in multiple different sectors, including education and opportunities; employment and income; health and welfare; conflict and violence; politics and power; and intentions and assumptions.

Stereotyping others could lead to immense levels of conflict, hence being a barrier to peace. For example, in terms of education and opportunities, multiple people do not get access to education due to where they are from, despite being at the same intelligence as other applicants. In countries like South Korea, society puts an intense amount of pressure onto the student to do well in their studies as they believe that only those who do well in school will be successful in the future. This pressure that students have, due to the stereotypes in South Korea, has lead to the suicide rates of teenagers in South Korea to increase rapidly as they believe that they will never be good enough or fit the stereotype. This shows that stereotypes based on one’s background or intelligence leads to intense pressure on the individual, hence leading to immense amounts of internal conflict. Here is the brainstorm that our group did on the impacts of stereotyping on an individuals education and opportunities:

These stereotypes could also lead to physical or verbal violence, such as bullying or riots. For example, in terms of intentions and assumptions, if one stereotypes someone as dangerous due to their skin colour or religion, it could lead to immense levels of conflict and violence. An example of this is the USA, where many individuals assume that just because an individual’s skin colour is black, they are dangerous. This has lead to immense levels of abuse and violence towards the black people in America, such as black kids getting bullied in school, or even getting shot and killed by other Americans. Hence stereotyping people is one of the biggest barriers that human have to peace. If we stop making assumptions about people, and if we stop marginalising them and stereotyping them, then the levels of conflict in the world will significantly decrease, and the world will definitely be a more peaceful place.

During this session, we also watched a documentary of a teacher doing a simulation on her third-grade student in order to make them experience what it feels like to be marginalised and judges based on features that you are born with, like skin colour. The teacher separated the class into blue-eyed children and brown-eyed children and gave more attention and privilege to the blue-eyed children. In the end, violence broke out between the kids from the different groups, and it brings up the question of whether or not this violence was inevitable. This experiment suggests that conflict will always arise between people, even if it is because of something as simple as eye colour because humans have a superiority complex. However, violence can be avoided in every situation because it really depends on one’s ability to control themselves.

IFP Reflection – Conflict, Violence and Peace building

by Parvathy

So far we have had around 2 months of IFP, and during these sessions, we discussed various topics such as collaboration, conflict, violence, and peacebuilding.

Conflict and violence are very tied into one another, usually, conflict leads to violence. However, I believe that although conflict is inevitable (due to everyone’s differing opinions), violence is inevitable if we consider the consequences of our actions and take other people’s opinions into account before making decisions. Violence does not necessarily only have to be physical, it can be emotional, verbal or even cultural, and I strongly believe that all these forms of violence can be avoided if only people become more self-aware and less selfish.

We also discussed the different forms of conflict and violence that arose from the movie Crazy Rich Asians. This movie sparked a lot of controversies because of the lack of representation of “brown” people – Indians and Malays – in Singapore. One response to this movie mentioned the racism present in Singapore, and how nobody talks about it, and I kind of agree with this, but I also believe that the levels of racism in Singapore are not as high as other countries such as the USA. I believe that certain forms of conflict might take hundreds of years to be resolved, or it might never be resolved. This is because humans are just naturally very self-centred narcissists who will find the smallest of things to use against others as long as it leads to them feeling more superior to others. However, I believe that through educating people, they will learn more about the consequences of violence and why they should not act upon the conflicts they have with others, and instead should try to resolve them. This will definitely make the world a more peaceful place.

We also did an activity a few sessions ago, where we spilt ourselves into two groups, the Jahs – a poor country that doesn’t trust rich countries as they have been exploited by them – and the Kays – a rich country that have good intentions that just wants to help the Jahs. The Jahs were not given any information about the Kays other than the fact that they are a rich country, and the Kays wanted to help Jah prosper and be a better country. The objective of this task was to come to a conclusion on how the Kays will be able to help the Jahs, but the misinformation and being unable to communicate effectively really prevented us from getting to a conclusion, instead we reached a conflict. From this activity I learnt that in order to communicate effectively and maintain peace, we need to let others make their statements without any interruption, hence building a wall of trust between the two parties. We also need to keep in mind that everyone has different opinions, hence it really will not be effective to have one single person represent a whole group of people. If there was only one person representing a whole group, then there is bound to be internal conflict within that group, and this might hinder their ability to interact with others.

So far in IFP, I have really been able to build my collaboration skills (LO5) and I have also been able to learn more about how to be a better collaborator and maintain peace instead of creating conflict.

IFP 2020-2021

by Parvathy

IFP, Initiative For Peace, is a completely new activity for me, and so far it has been really interesting. The reason why I chose to do IFP is because I wanted to build my leadership skills, meet new people and build my collaboration skills, and also because I want to know more about how I can help the world be more educated.

So far in our past two sessions, we have had discussions about what we think IFP will be, what we hope to achieve from IFP, and we also did some collaborative activity and reflected on them to figure out ways to improve our collaboration skills.

Through the collaborative activities that we did, I learnt that in order to corporate better with each other we need to be patient, open-minded, and respectful. This will allow the other group members to feel comfortable and therefore be able to share their opinions with the group. By doing so we will be building trust in one another, hence allowing our group members and ourselves to achieve our individual and collective goals.

Through participating in this activity, I hope to improve my collaboration skills (LO5) and I also hope to gain a better awareness of myself and how I can grow to be a better person (LO1).  I think that these goals are completely achievable and once I achieve them it will be very beneficial in my future, especially in university and in the workplace when I have to collaborate with others. I also hope to plan an IFP peacebuilding conference that will be able to teach others how to be more peaceful and prevent conflicts (LO3). I know that this may not be feasible because of the current covid-19 situation, but I really hope the pandemic gets better so we can actually hold this conference.